I’m pretty confused by your paragraph describing the “futuristic bioreactor”. It doesn’t seem like we want almost any of those features for cultured meat.
The only parts that seem like they would be needed in are “[...] assembling those molecules into muscle and fat cells, and forming those cells into the complex tissues we love to eat” and “It has precise environmental controls and gas exchange systems that keep the internal temperature, pH, and oxygen levels in the ideal range for cell and tissue growth”
Some (though not all) of the others seem like they might be useful if we were to try and make cultured meat production as decentralizable as current meat production (and far more decentralized than factory farming).
We might not have to replicate the animal systems precisely, but we’d definitely need cheap solutions to the problems of contamination (3rd sentence), sensitivity/robustness (5th sentence), waste management (6th sentence), and scalability (7th and 8th sentences). All of these are currently huge issues for any biomanufacturing.
For the contamination sentence: what’s wrong with equipment and media sterilization? Why wouldn’t we just grow meat in sterilized equipment in managed facilities? Also, couldn’t we just sterlize after the fact?
For the sensitivity / robustness: why does it need to be robust? Can’t it just be grown in a special facility? It’s not like you can mimic the Doritos production process at home, but that doesn’t stop a lot of Doritos being made. Why would the bioreactor need to placed outside?
For waste management: This does seem necessary. But months / years of continual operation don’t seem necessary (though more efficient if it can be pulled off). If the bioreactor is shut down and sterilised intermittently, that seems like it would suffice.
For scalability: I believe you that scalability is an issue, but the examples in the 7th and 8th sentences seem unnecessary and unlike any other (roughly) nature-mimicking process we’ve chosen. Why should the bioreactor need to grow? If the volume needs to change over time, couldn’t this be achieved with a piston-like mechanism? In general, we produce things on factory lines, not via creating replicating machines. Useful replicating machines are certainly far beyond our capacity to make de novo (though we can tweak nature’s small self-replicating machines)
I’m pretty confused by your paragraph describing the “futuristic bioreactor”. It doesn’t seem like we want almost any of those features for cultured meat.
The only parts that seem like they would be needed in are “[...] assembling those molecules into muscle and fat cells, and forming those cells into the complex tissues we love to eat” and “It has precise environmental controls and gas exchange systems that keep the internal temperature, pH, and oxygen levels in the ideal range for cell and tissue growth”
Some (though not all) of the others seem like they might be useful if we were to try and make cultured meat production as decentralizable as current meat production (and far more decentralized than factory farming).
We might not have to replicate the animal systems precisely, but we’d definitely need cheap solutions to the problems of contamination (3rd sentence), sensitivity/robustness (5th sentence), waste management (6th sentence), and scalability (7th and 8th sentences). All of these are currently huge issues for any biomanufacturing.
For the contamination sentence: what’s wrong with equipment and media sterilization? Why wouldn’t we just grow meat in sterilized equipment in managed facilities? Also, couldn’t we just sterlize after the fact?
For the sensitivity / robustness: why does it need to be robust? Can’t it just be grown in a special facility? It’s not like you can mimic the Doritos production process at home, but that doesn’t stop a lot of Doritos being made. Why would the bioreactor need to placed outside?
For waste management: This does seem necessary. But months / years of continual operation don’t seem necessary (though more efficient if it can be pulled off). If the bioreactor is shut down and sterilised intermittently, that seems like it would suffice.
For scalability: I believe you that scalability is an issue, but the examples in the 7th and 8th sentences seem unnecessary and unlike any other (roughly) nature-mimicking process we’ve chosen. Why should the bioreactor need to grow? If the volume needs to change over time, couldn’t this be achieved with a piston-like mechanism? In general, we produce things on factory lines, not via creating replicating machines. Useful replicating machines are certainly far beyond our capacity to make de novo (though we can tweak nature’s small self-replicating machines)